Abstract In this article we discuss the impact of conservation laws, specifically U(1) charge conservation and energy conservation, on scrambling dynamics, especially on the approach to the late time fully scrambled state. As a model, we consider a d + 1 dimensional (d ≥ 2) holographic conformal field theory with Einstein gravity dual. Using the holographic dictionary, we calculate out-of-time-order-correlators (OTOCs) that involve the conserved U(1) current operator or energy-momentum tensor. We show that these OTOCs approach their late time value as a power law in time, with a universal exponent $$ \frac{d}{2} $$ d 2 . We also generalize the result to compute OTOCs between general operators which have overlap with the conserved charges.
Abstract In this article we discuss the impact of conservation laws, specifically U(1) charge conservation and energy conservation, on scrambling dynamics, especially on the approach to the late time fully scrambled state. As a model, we consider a d + 1 dimensional (d ≥ 2) holographic conformal field theory with Einstein gravity dual. Using the holographic dictionary, we calculate out-of-time-order-correlators (OTOCs) that involve the conserved U(1) current operator or energy-momentum tensor. We show that these OTOCs approach their late time value as a power law in time, with a universal exponent 2d d 2 . We also generalize the result to compute OTOCs between general operators which have overlap with the conserved charges.
A bstract The late time behavior of OTOCs involving generic non-conserved local operators show exponential decay in chaotic many body systems. However, it has been recently observed that for certain holographic theories, the OTOC involving the U(1) conserved current for a gauge field instead varies diffusively at late times. The present work generalizes this observation to conserved currents corresponding to higher-form symmetries that belong to a wider class of symmetries known as generalized symmetries. We started by computing the late time behavior of OTOCs involving U(1) current operators in five dimensional AdS-Schwarzschild black hole geometry for the 2-form antisymmetric B -fields. The bulk solution for the B -field exhibits logarithmic divergences near the asymptotic AdS boundary which can be regularized by introducing a double trace deformation in the boundary CFT. Finally, we consider the more general case with antisymmetric p -form fields in arbitrary dimensions. In the scattering approach, the boundary OTOC can be written as an inner product between asymptotic ‘in’ and ‘out’ states which in our case is equivalent to computing the inner product between two bulk fields with and without a shockwave background. We observe that the late time OTOCs have power law tails which seems to be a universal feature of the higher-form fields with U(1) charge conservation.
The delocalization or scrambling of quantum information has emerged as a central ingredient in the understanding of thermalization in isolated quantum many-body systems. Recently, significant progress has been made analytically by modeling non-integrable systems as periodically driven systems, lacking a Hamiltonian picture, while honest Hamiltonian dynamics are frequently limited to small system sizes due to computational constraints. In this paper, we address this by investigating the role of conservation laws (including energy conservation) in the thermalization process from an information-theoretic perspective. For general non-integrable models, we use the equilibrium approximation to show that the maximal amount of information is scrambled (as measured by the tripartite mutual information of the time-evolution operator) at late times even when a system conserves energy. In contrast, we explicate how when a system has additional symmetries that lead to degeneracies in the spectrum, the amount of information scrambled must decrease. This general theory is exemplified in case studies of holographic conformal field theories (CFTs) and the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model. Due to the large Virasoro symmetry in 1+1D CFTs, we argue that, in a sense, these holographic theories are not maximally chaotic, which is explicitly seen by the non-saturation of the second Rényi tripartite mutual information. The roles of particle-hole and U(1) symmetries in the SYK model are milder due to the degeneracies being only two-fold, which we confirm explicitly at both large- and small-N. We reinterpret the operator entanglement in terms of the growth of local operators, connecting our results with the information scrambling described by out-of-time-ordered correlators, identifying the mechanism for suppressed scrambling from the Heisenberg perspective.
The onset of quantum chaos in quantum field theory may be studied using out-of-time-order correlators at finite temperature. Recent work argued that a time scale logarithmic in the central charge emerged in the context of two-dimensional conformal field theories, provided the intermediate channel was dominated by the Virasoro identity block. This suggests a wide class of conformal field theories that exhibit a version of fast scrambling. In the present work we study this idea in more detail. We begin by clarifying to what extent correlators of wave packets built out of superpositions of primary operators may be used to quantify quantum scrambling. Subject to certain caveats, these results concur with previous work. We then go on to study the contribution of intermediate states beyond the Virasoro identity block. We find that at late times, time-ordered correlators exhibit a familiar decoupling theorem, suppressing the contribution of higher dimension operators. However this is no longer true of the out-of-time-order correlators relevant for the discussion of quantum chaos. We compute the contributions of these conformal blocks to the relevant correlators and find they are able to dominate in many interesting limits. Interpreting these results in the context of holographic models of quantum gravity, sheds new light on the black hole information problem by exhibiting a class of correlators where bulk effective field theory does not predict its own demise.
A bstract In this note, we investigate the out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) for quantum fields in a holographic framework describing Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pairs. We compute the four-point and six-point OTOCs using the gravity dual, represented by the string worldsheet theory in Anti-de Sitter (AdS) space. These correlators quantify the rate at which information is scrambled, leading to the disentanglement of the EPR pair. We demonstrate consistency between two approaches for calculating OTOCs: the holographic influence functional on worldsheets perturbed by shock waves, and the worldsheet scattering in the eikonal approximation. We show that the OTOCs exhibit an initial phase of exponential growth, with six-point correlators indicating a marginally longer scrambling time compared to four-point correlators.
The scrambling of quantum information in closed many-body systems, as measured by out-of-timeordered correlation functions (OTOCs), has received considerable attention lately.Recently, a hydrodynamical description of OTOCs has emerged from considering random local circuits.Numerical work suggests that aspects of this description are universal to ergodic many-body systems, even without randomness; a conjectured explanation for this is that while the random circuits have noise built into them, deterministic quantum systems, much like classically chaotic ones, "generate their own noise" and look effectively random on sufficient length scales and timescales.In this paper, we extend this approach to systems with locally conserved quantities (e.g., energy).We do this by considering local random unitary circuits with a conserved U(1) charge and argue, with numerical and analytical evidence, that the presence of a conservation law slows relaxation in both time-ordered and out-of-time-ordered correlation functions; both can have a diffusively relaxing component or "hydrodynamic tail" at late times.We verify the presence of such tails also in a deterministic, periodically driven system.We show that for OTOCs, the combination of diffusive and ballistic components leads to a wave front with a specific asymmetric shape, decaying as a power law behind the front.These results also explain existing numerical investigations in non-noisy ergodic systems with energy conservation.Moreover, we consider OTOCs in Gibbs states, parametrized by a chemical potential μ, and apply perturbative arguments to show that for μ ≫ 1 the ballistic front of information spreading can only develop at times exponentially large in μ-with the information traveling diffusively at earlier times.We also develop a new formalism for describing OTOCs and operator spreading, which allows us to interpret the saturation of OTOCs as a form of thermalization on the Hilbert space of operators.
Fast scrambling and exponential growth of complexity are two distinctive features of quantum gravity, offering a unique window into the mechanisms that govern the semiclassical limit of the holographic duality. In this thesis, we explore these information-theoretic phenomena through two key diagnostics --- out-of-time ordered correlation functions (OTOCs) and spread complexity --- computed in the setting of two-dimensional holographic conformal field theories (CFTs). First, we focus on the large-c limit of Liouville theory, where the computation of OTOCs reveals distinctive insights into both the chaotic nature and the structural features of the theory. Remarkably, we find it exhibits a maximal Lyapunov exponent, despite lacking the identity operator in its spectrum, and a scrambling time logarithmic in the central charge. Using path integral techniques, we calculate heavy-light four-point functions, and uncover a conformal block expansion dominated by the exchange of an infinite tower of spinless double-trace operators. We attribute the chaotic behaviour of the OTOC to this exchange of operators, which can be thought of as dressed scramblons. Additionally, we observe that at the onset of scrambling, the dominance of conformal blocks shifts from heavy primaries at early times to light primaries at late times. Second, we turn to the diagnostic of spread complexity in locally excited holographic CFTs and argue that its time derivative is dual to the proper radial momentum of a massive point particle propagating in Anti-de Sitter spacetime (AdS). Exploiting the conformal symmetry and the emergence of an ``effective'' SL(2,R) group, we employ representation-theoretic techniques to compute return amplitudes, Lanczos coefficients, and spread complexities. We then verify our conjectured duality for three settings: the CFT on the line, dual to Poincaré AdS; the CFT on the circle, dual to global AdS; and the CFT at finite temperature, dual to a BTZ black hole. In the gravitational theory, the same SL(2,R) structure emerges as the isometry group of the infalling plane of the bulk particle. Third, we generalise the analysis of spread complexity to modular Hamiltonian evolution. Exploiting the rich algebraic structure of modular theory, we construct the modular Hamiltonians Kₘ and the half-sided modular translations G for the three example states above. Leveraging conformal symmetry, we once again compute modular return amplitudes, Lanczos coefficients, and modular spread complexities. In particular, we emphasise the role of ``conformal regularisation'' --- i.e. regulating with the operator that generates modular evolution - in preserving the effective SL(2,R) structure of the amplitudes. We find that evolution under Kₘ exhibits thermal spread complexity for β = 1 across all examples, while G-evolution universally leads to quadratic growth. Finally, we provide a formal explanation of these results, identifying the role of the Killing norm D of the evolution operator as the key factor governing the behaviour of complexity.